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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Crafts-SOON!

Okay so I've literally spent one million hours this weekend blog stalking! I've also been pinning a lot on my boards on www.pinterest.com. Follow me: Jenniferkaylyn.

My brain hurts I have so many ideas, crafts,etc that I NEED TO DO!!! Geeeze. I need to really kick it in gear this week.

Okay so I went to a sale with my mom yesterday. It's jamie's furniture collections called High & Dry. LOVE her stuff. I really hate paying some of her prices because my mom can literally do EVERYTHING she does. But we really love to go for ideas, inspiration,etc. Crossing our fingers that my mom will someday build her own shop on their land in Gardner! Okay so my mom got an adorable wood tray. It was actually a table but the legs got burned off in a fire. So Jamie made it a tray.

I got this huge heavy wood drawer. It is distressed and painted a gray/silvery color. Brian and I are needing wall storage in our master bathroom. So we plan to put our glass apothecary jars (from Crate & Barrel, yay!) in here and hang it on the wall!

Here is an adorable magnetic tray I got. I LOVE the colors and I love this little thing. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. But it inspired me to make my own. I bought a million trays for our wedding and chalked them. They are magnetic. I will be making my own magnets, drilling holes, and putting ribbon on these babies. What an easy gift. My best friends will be getting this for their birthday & wedding shower. Can't wait to do this project. I wish I got the 3 other red trays though because I'm in love.

Lastly, I got this adorable tray. It can be used for so many things. On our dresser to hold jewelry, etc. Or it could be tilted up against a counter of shelf. I could add a clip on it and it could become a great little note tray you can leave notes on. Ohhh the options are endless.



Onto my THRIFT STORE FINDS. I got all of this stuff for $20.00, ALL of it. I get so excited to go to the Thrift stores. I love when they have sales too!






The chair will either be going in my sewing/craft room. Or it will be added to our new dining room farm table and chairs. I like the thought of random chairs. Goal this week-get the dining room table and chairs done so I can pull my jeep into our cleaned garage! Here's some inspiration:




All those candle stick holders are for a project my mom has been dying to do. We will of course paint these little guys and then be adding vintage plates on the top. They will be cute dessert trays & dinner serving trays, or they could hold jewelry like the picture below. Here is some inspiration:




Those 4 magnetic trays I got, two of them are muffin tins will be used to create magnetic signs. I will paint the ugly designed one. I am sure they will be gifts. I am not sure about the muffin tins though. I will still be searching for projects. Here are some inspiration pictures for the magnetic trays:

Ohhh.... I found this for my muffin tins. Pretty cute huh?

Onto my classroom. Oh man Brian is starting to get annoyed that I've been glued to teacher blogs and staying up really and I mean really LATE searching and downloading FREE, did I say FREE templates, lessons, ideas for my classroom!!!! Now I need to start printing them out, sorting them into files, etc. I really need to stop because I just have so many files now that I need to focus on doing something with them.

But here are some ideas that I will be doing in my classroom:
Modge Podge new name magnets for me since it will now be Ms.Shields! Eeekk so fun! (Yes, I'm still going by Ms. because I'm not ready to be called Mrs.) It sounds old. I'm in denial that I'm a grown up.

Make fabric sling bookshelves. Look at this picture. Amazing. Those sling bookshelves are super duper easy to make and I will be showing them off in my classroom this year!


Making math station tubs

Laminate one million things

Make activity sticks for quick brain breaks

Make a new Lesson Planner Notebook

Make a new Substitute Notebook

Get new tubs for my reading corner

Back to school postcards for our 3rd graders

Back to school goodies for the kiddos

New classroom jobs

Decide on the official layout of my classroom, cause this girl needs a change!

Information packet parents

FIND Cubbies for my classroom. Any suggestions? Of course something free or diy would be more my style! :)

I really could sit here and go on and on and on and on on the ONE million things I need to do for my classroom. I though this was suppose to get easier each year? Well in my case I have way to many new ideas flowing that I think it's going to be a slight bit harder.

Off I go..... I wish I could say that I will be working on one of these projects today but..... I have to go cut music and choreograph a routine for tomorrow. BOOOO!! I mean I love dance but I'm not quite ready for it to start up again!! What a busy time of the year it is going to be!! Where did summer go? Oh yeah I got married and left the country for the whole month of June & then moved, cleaned, fixed up and consolidated houses with my amazing husband in July. Time flies!

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Love Burlap & Love Cleaning!

My mama came over last night and we fixed my sewing machine,hooray!! My sewing machine was back in action. I first made a burlap pillow. Some of you know my father is in the coffee business & has been asking his warehouses to keep all of the extra burlap bags! Each burlap bag ranges to hold 132.276-154.322lbs. of coffee. (BAM) I remembered this from working for him my whole life.  We also used TONS of these burlap bags for our wedding & then recently my sister in law Laurel started up an Etsy shop that uses all the coffee bags in various ways. She is so creative & I just love her work. She did lots of amazing crafts for our wedding. We love you La! Here is her Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/LaurelHanson?ref=pr_shop_more

Back to my burlap pillow. I'm slightly obsessed with burlap. I cut out the burlap, pinned and started sewing. Because of the burlap bag I actually only had to sew two sides. I sewed one and half of another side with the sewing machine. I then turned the pillow right side out. Then my mom and I Jam/Crammed my pillow inside of the burlap. Then my crafty mama showed me how to do an invisible stitch. This little pillow took me maybe 7 minutes, okay okay maybe 10 minutes since we had to pin lots!

Ta da!


I love how it turned out. I will be making more don't worry. I also just love the wording on the pillows so fun! 

Next Project.....
Brian and I wanted something new to hang outside by our front door. He invisioned something with our last name on it! 

I of course immediately thought....burlap! I found an old canvas that my sister in law used to practice making me a painting for my classroom. I'm glad I kept this canvas because usually I throw everything away.

This canvas roughly measures 16 x24 but any size canvas will do

Cut out any fabric you would like to use. Leave 2 inches on each side so that you can tuck it and staple it to the back when we are finished. 


I then wanted to create a color contrast and a rough vintage look. I decided that I was going to use a piece of muslin to go on top of the burlap. The muslin I cut into a rectangle. Roughly a 6 x20 section. I doubled this up too since this muslin was soo thin. This is left over material from our wedding. We had tons of muslin at our wedding, muslin is my second favorite material right now! 


Now I needed to iron my fabric out. I called my mom and asked her if I could iron burlap. She said ehhh probably not I think it's highly flammable! hehe. It's not, I ironed it. I did place a towel and fabric over it so that I did not come in direct contact with the iron as she recommended to do. But I did try the iron directly on the burlap and it didn't do anything! I took precaution just in case!


Next step pin the muslin to the burlap wherever it is that you like it. I tucked under the 2 inch border when I did this so that I did not pin it in the wrong place. 

Sewing time: I left my edges of my muslin out because I wanted the raw look! I sewed the entire piece of muslin to my burlap.

Stencil time. I got out my dark gray paint and stencils. I carefully, carefully, carefully stenciled these words. Of course if you look close you can see all the tiny imperfections, but hey that's okay!!! I'm not perfect! It gives it uniqueness right!


I then realized there was too big of a place space after Shields. I of course thought of burlap roses. I made 3 of them and place some extra burlap behind them to look like a little leaf attached to the flower. This rose I folded the burlap in half and just rolled it up like a cinnamon roll! ha! Seriously, I did! I then hot glued along the way. 


Hot glue the burlap roses on the muslin.

Next step: No picture- I used a staple gun and stapled the material to the back. I tried to make it look nice by folding it under in the back and then stapling. I actually lined the white canvas with a gray fabric because you could see through the burlap. You don't have to do this but I did since I had stuff on my white canvas. 

I added a muslin ribbon I got from one of our wedding presents to the back. Shout out to the Bassi's! :) I also used a staple gun to staple the ribbon on the back.


Here it is! How cute! It's by NO means perfect but we love it! 




As for Cleaning.....
I LOVE cleaning too! Mr.Shields has decided to take on a HUGE task. REORGANIZING OUR KITCHEN now that we have made the consolidation! Here are some pics of him in action. I can't wait. I get my own baking cabinet! So exciting! I will be baking soon. Mr. Shields is trying to decide on whoopie pies or chocolate pudding chip cookies! Yum Yum Yum!




Monday, July 25, 2011

Birthday Fun!

 We've had lots of Birthday fun lately. I have a few pictures I wanted to post about some crafts I did.

Here is a ruffle cake that I made for my sisters birthday. It turned out awesome. I added vintage buttons to it to give it some flare! Not too bad for my first time using this technique.




Next thing I made was a picture frame accessory holder for my sister Sara. I got an old rustic frame and covered the back with chicken wire. Beware if you use chicken wire it's rather sharp. I cut my fingers and leg about 10 times and had blood everywhere! ha! Then I got a wooden letter S, painted it white, made some rosettes to put in the corners. I made a double fabric rosette for the top of the frame so that it was a bigger one. The rosettes you see on the frame are attached by twine. I hot glued a piece of twine on the back of the rosettes so that she can reposition them if she wants to. Here are pictures. 







Here is another one I made for my best friend Jlall as a birthday gift too. Hers was made with red because that color will always remind me of her! Hers turned out great. I did all of the same steps with this one as well. Then my bff Ang got adorable earrings that she placed on the frame too as part of her gift. What a unique gift.







And now for Charlie Bear: He turned 6. We had a mini birthday party here for him. Charlie got a toy for his birthday & some popcorn of course, his favorite. His new toy is piggie and it makes a pig sound too when you squeeze him. It's more of a grunt then a squeal. I think it's hilarious and Brian hates it. Well Charlie & Jersey are obsessed with the piggie. Dee however has about 0% interest in the thing. But here are some pics of Charlie on his birthday with his piggie and siblings!




haha I placed it there!


The piggie made it in all of the pictures! Its the new favorite toy around here. 
Happy Birthday Charlie Bear, we LOVE you!